Josh spent 13 years building his career at Oracle, was recruited at a security conference in Paris, and eventually led the international certifications team that determined which governments and regulated industries Oracle could legally sell into. He was good at his job. He was trusted. He had just returned from an EU cybersecurity conference where he'd been featured as an expert panelist, 50-page compliance plan nearly complete, a meeting with Oracle's number two cloud executive almost on the calendar, when the layoff email quietly routed to the wrong folder.

He almost missed it entirely.

Josh shares what Oracle's offer actually looked like after 13 years: 16 weeks of severance that felt significant until he did the math, unvested stock wiped clean while Oracle's share price climbed nearly $100 in the months that followed, and a manager who refused his calls and pointed him to FAQs that hadn't been released yet. He reflects on a layoff he believes was generated by a database query of 30,000 emails, automated, no human in the loop, and on salary increases so thin he was earning less in real terms after 13 years than when he started. What does he believe? That no one is indispensable, that loyalty is not worth the paper it's printed on, and that the only leader at Oracle who ever treated people like humans was the one who's no longer there.